Fight club
AFJEL to intensify battle against illegal operators, JONUMs, Allwyn, Netherlands &Co
Good morning, on Gaming&Co today:
French trade body re-elects Nicolas Béraud as President, highlights industry expertise and black market threat
JONUM legislation set to be published; Allwyn online growth
KVA: Search requests for Dutch illegal operators on rise; Brazil examines blanket advertising ban
News shorts: DraftKings, Nevada, Las Vegas Sands
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AFJEL unifies in fight against illegal operators
Trade body re-elects Nicolas Béraud as President alongside new VP to tackle black market
French operators unite: France’s online gambling trade body AFJEL has vowed to intensify the fight against illegal operators targeting French players as it announced the re-election of Nicolas Béraud as its President for the next 12 months. Béraud, the founder and CEO of Betclic, will be seconded by Alexandre Roos, the founder and CEO of Winamax, who was named as administrator and Vice-President of AFJEL.
Winning speed: Roos’s accession to his new role at AFJEL is a mark of the rapid progress Winamax has made since joining AFJEL in November. The arrival of the number 2 operator in the country as a member of the trade group means that apart from FDJ and Kindred Group’s flagship brand Unibet, AFJEL now includes nearly all the operators active in France.
"I am honoured to have been elected Vice-President of AFJEL in order to support a favourable framework for gaming tech companies, which are highly strategic for the development of the sector,” Roos commented.
Strength in unity: “As a pioneering French tech company and sector leader, Winamax will be contributing its expertise and strengthening the association's action at a time when the sector is facing major challenges such as securing the digital space for French players in the face of the ever-growing threat from the illegal market.”
Black market threat
AFJEL’s three key priorities will be strengthening player protection standards, establishing fair regulatory and fiscal conditions, and intensifying the fight against illegal online gambling. The latter’s recent and “massive expansion constitutes unfair and dangerous competition,” it said.
Costs of the illegal market: In Nov23, AFJEL said around 3 million French players were active on illegal websites rising recently to 4 million, which Béraud said was higher than the number of players active on regulated sites.
Speaking at Gaming in France’s event during ICE, he noted that the illegal market was worth around €1.6bn in 2023, and the figure would have risen exponentially in the past 18 months.
Unique asset: AFJEL added that its members' technological focus and expertise were strategic assets for the French state. The Betclic CEO said: “AFJEL is the only professional association to represent online gambling tech companies. Its members are key strategic partners in protecting players, fighting cybercrime and the scourge of the illegal market, and securing the digital space thanks to demanding technological standards."
Betclic reported strong 2024 results last week, but said France’s regulatory set-up “made no sense and was unfair”.
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JONUM legislation expected in coming weeks
Fantasy betting products benefited from extra 12 months with no regulatory framework
Betting on fantasy: The decrees, or secondary legislation, formalising the terms and conditions of JONUMs, the digital assets activated in the form of NFT cards in fantasy betting leagues, are set to be approved by the relevant ministries and published in the Journal Officiel in the coming weeks.
Condemnation: The law relative to JONUMs passed in May last year, but was much criticised and dubbed the ‘Sorare law’.
For its critics, it was tailor-made to provide a legal status for the French Web3 unicorn to the detriment of larger stakeholders such as casinos, whose own regulatory projects around online casinos were ignored by the government during the 2023-24 parliamentary session.
Sales volumes Sorare - Feb25 (Source: CryptoSlam)
Further reading: JONUMs blur the lines between gambling and video games.
High tension: France’s Web3 amendments
Digital growth drives Allwyn in 2024
Gaming GGR up 12% for UK lottery operator as it takes on new financing
Plan B: Allwyn has launched euro and USD term loan Bs totalling €450m and $100m that will be used to repay current debts and for general corporate purposes. The company said the transaction will be leverage neutral and revealed that FY24 preliminary revenues had increased 12% YoY to €8.8bn.
Mixed UK results: Gaming GGR was up 12%, its “focus on accelerating organic growth” and the “benefit from the first full year contribution” from the UK drove strong growth “across most markets”.
However, the UK produced “lower profitability owing to the introduction of a new incentive and profitability mechanism with the start of the new (lottery) licence in Feb24”.
Online advance: Digital GGR was up 20% and reached 39% of overall revenues. Adj. EBITDA increased 4% to €1.5bn, the “adj. EBITDA margin remained strong at 38.6%”, the group said.
Net debt was 2,2x of adj. EBITDA at €3.3bn. Q4 revenues increased 10% to €2.4bn and adj. EBITDA growth was +12%.
Dutch traffic to illegal operators on the rise
Search requests for “no deposit limits” grow exponentially
Dutch flyers: According to the Dutch affiliate trade body Quality Mark for Responsible Affiliates (KVA), illegal operators “are playing an increasingly important role on the Dutch market, partly due to aggressive advertising campaigns on social media and search engines”.
Analysing online gaming search traffic since Oct24, the KVA found that search levels for terms like “casino without deposit limits” and “casino without Cruks” (the self-exclusion system) had risen from more than 172,000 in October to more than 294,000 in November and had reached nearly 413,000 by February.
New territory: According to the study, by 5 March there had been more than 1 million searches for the terms and the number of illegal domains that appeared in the SERPs increased from 19 in October to 72 this month.
KVA added that Dutch players lost over €300m to illegal operators during Q4.
Further reading: The advertising restrictions impacting legal operators in Belgium and the Netherlands.
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(© Associated Press)
Brazil to debate advertising ban
South American giant to examine ending gambling promotion on all media channels
Prohibition: Brazil’s Sports Commission is ready to debate banning advertising for sports betting today as part of changes that would amend current regulations and stop the promotion of gambling on all media and online channels in the country.
Safeguarding: The measure is sponsored by Senator Styvenson Valentim, who said prohibiting the activity would help protect young players from being exposed to sports betting at an early age.
“This proposal is justified in view of the sudden change in the profile of bettors, which is now mostly made up of young people, who have at their disposal 24 hours a day with just one click the possibility of placing bets without any barrier to impulsive behaviour,” he said.
News shorts
DraftKings has registered the brand name DraftKings Predict with the National Futures Association, the self-regulatory body for US derivatives, reports The Closing Line. The move would imply that DraftKings is future-proofing any scenario in which it might want to launch a prediction markets offering in the US.
Meanwhile, Nevada has become the first state to issue Kalshi, the prediction market operator that rose to prominence during last November's US election, with a cease-and-desist letter and ordered it to stop operating.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board said election and sports contracts were illegal in the state. Commenting on X, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said: “Last year proved how important our mission is. We have fought hard to get to this point, but the job’s not finished and the work will continue until prediction markets achieve their full potential.”
Las Vegas Sands CEO Rob Goldstein is set to step down in 12 months when current President and COO Patrick Dumont will succeed him. Goldstein will continue to serve as a senior advisor until March 2028, he will assist the group with government relations and strategic activities.
Calendar
Results: 19 Mar: OPAP, Sportradar 20 Mar: Bragg Gaming 21 Mar: Gambling.com 26 Mar: Playtech, Evoke
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